NEW YORK (Billboard) - Half art book, half music nerd bathroom reading, Dave Tompkins' long-in-the-works history of the vocoder, "How to Wreck a Nice Beach," chronicles the sound synthesizing system's ...

On Version History: how to play your voice like an instrument, with a little help from Chromeo. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. is ...

While 2009 saw AutoTune reach an all time high in pop culture, then almost die, the voice modulation effect better known as the vocoder has actually had a storied past that goes all the way back to ...

With his book How to Wreck a Nice Beach, Dave Tompkins offered a complex and impeccably-researched history of the vocoder, a device that's been used to manipulate voices for high-ranking military ...

If you've listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you've probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That's thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research ...

The vocoder was never intended to change the music scene. In fact, it wasn’t meant for music at all. Its origins trace back a century, when engineer Homer Dudley at Bell Labs sought a more efficient ...

The vocoder—part military technology, part musical instrument—has had quite a history. In our new Object of Interest video, we explore the vocoder in settings ranging from the Second World War to ...

Stop Smiling Books/ Melville House; 335 pp. The room contains two turntables and a microphone. Hulking consoles line the walls, covered in dials and gauges and blinking lights, like the bridge of ...

DAVE TOMPKINS’ new book is titled How to Wreck a Nice Beach, but it has nothing to do with the BP oil spill, or any coast at all. Instead, the phrase he chose for his book title is how the words “how ...

At last! Two months after NYC rap writer Dave Tompkins’ vocoder history/odyssey How To Wreck A Nice Beach finally hit shelves, the long-awaited accompanying mix is done. Mixed by Monk-One, compiled by ...

A scientific tool for those lacking a voice, a means of encrypting voices during World War II, and a way to drop the funk, the vocoder has had many exhale its praises, from General Dwight D.